NED BLACKHAWK. Violence over the Land: Indians and Empires in the Early American West. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. 2006. Pp. 372. $35.00

Abstract

This is the most significant study of Great Basin history to emerge in recent decades. Ned Blackhawk's engaging book captures the marginalized past of Great Basin Indians and reconstructs it at the center of powerful colonial forces. In Blackhawk's story, Native American peoples are not merely sideshows on the edges of American history but historical actors with diplomatic agendas equal to that of their colonial counterparts. This is not simply a rewriting of regional history but a reshaping of the American story to place indigenous peoples at the center, with violence and pain used as interpretive tools. The scope of Blackhawk's study, from the late sixteenth century to the mid-nineteenth century, adds deep texture to longstanding regional narratives. The 1776 Dominguez-Escalante expedition, a typical starting point for Spanish-Ute relations in the Great Basin, does not appear in Blackhawk's story until chapter three. By the time of the padres' foray into what would become Utah, the Spanish and the Utes had forged complex and frequently violent relationships. A 1639 Spanish slave raid against Ute Indians marked the first documented encounter between the two peoples. By the mid-eighteenth century, the Utes had adapted “to the region's new violent economy” to become “accomplished and dreaded antagonists” themselves (p. 25). They also formed a powerful alliance with the Comanche to dominate New Mexico's northern perimeter.